Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

11 Responses to “What’s the State of the Economy?”

Reporting from America’s heartland, my large Japanese employer is hiring. The party line is we need to reduce headcount to save money, but overtime is running high and we are hiring. The Japanese seem to like to build new plants in the middle of the country concentrating on right to work states.

I imagine that by America’s heartland we would have to exclude ILLANNOY as this place is forcing business out to surrounding states. One person net is leaving the state of ILLANNOY every ten minutes. This is not a good trend nor one that will aid in the fiscal disaster created in Springfield.

Mortgage delinquencies as defined for this chart were below 4 percent for 20 years.

The rate jumped from about 3% in Jan 2008 to about 10% in 2009, and have not dipped below 9% for 4 years.

Nice definition of typical.

I propose that the useless blue color bar representing a “typical” 1% to 11% range be replaced with a more informative pair; a pink color bar representing “pre-schity economy” and a fudge color bar representing what we have now.

This chart looks good if the economy was at maximum production. However, despite QE raising the S&P index, the US Macro index is dropping. These ratios are too simple without any contextual information.

How can interest rate be considered typical when they are being held down by the feds?

For example, a 0 to .14 employment growth is good on top of a big employment number already. However, having .14 growth is not so impressive when employment never bounced back from a sharp drop.

One has to wonder what these indicators looked like circa 2007-2008, before the collapse. The parameters were even better then than now one would imagine. Looking at the same set of economic parameters how does one differentiate a healthy from a sick one? Or are these metrics the wrong things to analyze?

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About Barry Ritholtz

Ritholtz has been observing capital markets with a critical eye for 20 years. With a background in math & sciences and a law school degree, he is not your typical Wall St. persona. He left Law for Finance, working as a trader, researcher and strategist before graduating to asset managementRead More...

Quote of the Day

"The largest Asian central banks have gone on record that they are curbing their purchases of US debt. And they are also diversifying their huge reserves, steadily moving away from the dollar. The risks have simply become too many and too serious." -W. Joseph StroupeEditor, Global Events

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